Zenn
😀

How to create and use a site map for a foreign trade independent stati

に公開
sitemap
tech

How to Create and Submit a Sitemap for Your Independent Website

If your independent website has a large number of product pages, videos, industry news articles, and more—and you want them to be indexed and ranked faster and more effectively by search engines—you can submit a sitemap to help search engines better crawl and index your content. This can boost your site’s visibility and attract more potential visitors.

What Is a Sitemap?

A sitemap is essentially a map of your website that helps search engines find, crawl, and index all your site’s content. It tells search engines which pages are the most important.

XML sitemaps are designed for search engines, not human visitors, and cannot be seen by users browsing your website.

There are four main types of sitemaps:

  • General XML Sitemap
  • Video Sitemap
  • News Sitemap
  • Image Sitemap

Benefits of a Sitemap for Independent Websites

The larger and more complex a site is, the harder it becomes for both users and search engines to navigate. A sitemap simplifies navigation and brings several benefits:

  • Better Discoverability: XML sitemaps help search engines find important pages on your site—especially useful for large websites with thousands of pages that may be subject to limited crawl budgets.
  • Faster Indexing: For newer websites, submitting an XML sitemap helps pages get indexed faster. For sites updating existing content, including these updates in the sitemap helps Google discover changes more quickly.
  • Improved User Experience: An HTML sitemap allows users to easily find exactly what they’re looking for by displaying your most important pages in one place.

How to Create a Sitemap by Platform

WordPress

Starting with version 5.5, WordPress automatically generates a basic sitemap at:

This updates automatically when pages are published or updated.

For more control and customization, use a plugin like Yoast SEO:

  1. Log into WordPress Dashboard
  2. Go to Plugins > Add New
  3. Search for Yoast SEO
  4. Click Install Now, then Activate
  5. Go to SEO > General > Features and turn on XML Sitemaps

Your sitemap should now be available at:or

  • You cannot manually choose which pages to include.
  • To exclude a page:
    Go to the page’s SEO (Google) settings tab and turn off “Show this page in search results”

⚠️ This adds a noindex meta tag, but does not remove the URL from the sitemap.

Squarespace

  • Squarespace automatically generates your sitemap at:

  • You can exclude a page from search engines in the SEO tab, which also removes it from the sitemap.

  • Manual sitemap editing is not possible.

Shopify

  • Shopify auto-generates your sitemap at:

  • You can't edit the sitemap directly.

  • For more control, use third-party Shopify apps or external tools.

How to Create a Video Sitemap

If you host many videos and want them indexed as video content, upload them to a private video hosting platform that provides a video sitemap—like Kingsway Video.

  • All videos uploaded to Kingsway Video are automatically added to a video sitemap.
  • Submit this sitemap to Google Search Console to help Google quickly index your videos.
  • Your videos may then appear with dynamic previews in Google search results—boosting click-through rates.

How to Submit a Sitemap to Google

1. Open Google Search Console

2. Go to the “Sitemaps” Section

  • In the left-hand sidebar, under Index, click Sitemaps

3. Submit Your Sitemap

  • Paste the URL of your sitemap or video sitemap into Add a new sitemap
  • Click Submit

✅ You’ll receive a confirmation that your sitemap has been submitted successfully.

📅 Check back after a few hours or days to see if the status updates to Success.

How to Delete and Resubmit a Sitemap

If your website changes or your sitemap has errors, follow these steps:

  1. Log into Google Search Console
  2. Select your website
  3. Go to Index > Sitemaps
  4. In Submitted Sitemaps, click the row of the sitemap to delete
  5. Click the three-dot menu → Remove Sitemap
  6. Confirm deletion in the popup
  7. Google will process your request shortly

XML Sitemap Best Practices

Make sure your sitemap:

  • Only includes URLs that:

  • You want indexed

  • Return a 200 OK status

  • Are fully qualified and absolute (e.g., https://example.com/page)

  • Are canonical (the preferred version of the URL)

  • Follows technical standards:

  • UTF-8 encoding

  • Under 50MB or 50,000 URLs (use a sitemap index if needed)

  • Includes the correct namespace (e.g., https://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9)

  • Contains language/region variants where applicable

  • Linked from robots.txt file:
    This helps search engines find your sitemap faster.

Discussion